Monday, November 18, 2013

Pope Francis 'is mafia target after campaigning against corruption'

Pope Francis's crusade against corruption has made him a target for Italy's all-powerful mafia clans, a leading anti-mob prosecutor has warned.

Nicola Gratteri, who has battled Calabria's shadowy 'Ndrangheta mafia, said on Wednesday that Francis's attempt to bring transparency to the Vatican was making the white collar mobsters who do business with corrupt prelates "nervous and agitated".

He told the Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano: "Pope Francis is dismantling centres of economic power in the Vatican.

"If
the bosses could trip him up they wouldn't hesitate. I don't know if
organised criminals are in a position to do something, but they are
certainly thinking about it. They could be dangerous."

Francis, who has called for "a poor church",
has backed reform at the Vatican's bank, which has been suspected for
years of being a channel for the laundering of mob profits.

This week
police impounded a luxury hotel on Rome's Janiculum hill – formerly a
monastery – which the 'Ndrangheta allegedly purchased from a religious
order.

In a fiery sermon on Monday,
Francis railed against corruption and quoted the bible's advice that
practitioners be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their
neck.

"The mafia that invests, that launders money, that therefore
has the real power, is the mafia which has got rich for years from its
connivance with the church," said Gratteri. "These are the people who
are getting nervous."

Gratteri attacked priests and bishops in
southern Italy who legitimise mobsters. "Priests continuously visit the
houses of bosses for coffee, which gives the bosses strength and popular
legitimacy," he said. A bishop in Locri in Calabria had excommunicated
mobsters after they damaged fruit trees owned by the church, he said.

"But before that episode, the bosses had killed thousands of people"
without being sanctioned, he added.

Boosting the strong links
between mob and church is the fierce religious devotion of the gangsters
themselves, he said, adding that in his 26 years as a magistrate he had
never raided a mafia hideout which did not contain a religious image.

"There is no affiliation rite that does not evoke religion. 'Ndrangheta and the church walk hand in hand," he said.

A
survey of jailed mobsters had revealed that 88% were religious, he
added. "Before killing, a member of the 'Ndrangheta prays. He asks the
Madonna for protection."

Gratteri said mobsters did not consider
themselves wrongdoers, and used the example of a mafioso putting
pressure on a business owner to pay protection money, first by shooting
up his premises, then by kneecapping him.

"If the person still refuses,
the mobster is 'forced' to kill him. If you have no choice, you are not
committing a sin."